Three Monkees & Me

Enter Ping.fm.  Ping.fm is a site that makes life easier for people like me.  They are a 'one stop shop' for sending these status messages to all the social networking sites, whether it's from a form on their site, via an email, or via one of several IM 'bots' (ie, from withing Google Talk).  The one place they couldn't send the message was to my Joomla-based site.

So I created JoomPing.

The JoomPing component works in two ways:  It is called via Ping.fm's CustomURL service and adds the status message to the database.  It can also be displayed via a menu link, and, in this instance, will display received status messages.  There is also a module that can be added to any page you want to display the last 'x' number of Pings.  I have it displayed on my home page, so that people can instantly see what I'm up to.

This is my second ever Joomla extension, and my first component.  It seems to work on my site, and I hope it'll work for you.  I had no intention of making any money from this.  It's useful to me, and as a result, I thought I'd offer it to other fellow Joomla users. I'm still cutting my teeth with Joomla development, but if you have any suggestions, or problems, please let me know.

The whole social-networking world has gone MAD!!

Once upon a time, there was a simple telephone.  If my brother wanted to know what I had been up to lately, he'd pick up the phone.  Then we had email.  If my brothers and mum all wanted to know how christmas was with my daughter, a quick click or two, a couple of entries in the CC field, and that was that.

Now we have Social Networking where anyone who has every heard or seen your name can go and follow every inane rambling you post.  Just think, your brothers, parents, cousins, nephews, nieces, uncles-twice-removed-cousins-daughers-boyfriend, ex-partners, old posties & milko's, the tax man, ANYONE and EVERYONE can read that 'I had weetbix for brekkie'.

Just about every page you read has the ability to be added to any one of the eleventeen-hundrathousand bookmarking sites out there via a little panel of buttons.  But I wanted to approach it from a different angle.  It's all very well registering with all these sites, but how do you then let everyone know what you are connected to?  Pick up the phone??  :^)

I figured, if anyone found my site, and knew me enough to really want to know what colour undies I put on this morning, if any, they could select one of the Social Networking icons presented in mod_stalker, and follow/subscribe/whatever to my really-quite-dull-and-unimportant-drivel.

Anyway...

This is my first ever attempt at a Joomla plug-in.  It's working on my site, and I hope it'll work for you.  I had no intention of making any money from this.  It's useful to me, and as a result, I thought I'd offer it to other fellow Joomla users.  Currently, it supports:  Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, Jaiku, MySpace, Picasa, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter & YouTube.  If you want any others added, or have any suggestions, then feel free to let me know.

WARNING: Social Networking is seriously damaging to your time management, and possibly to your real-time relationships!!   Take some of the pressure off with Ping.fm, don't Social-Network without it!